


Happiness

by ravenbringslight



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Fluff, M/M, Sibling Incest, old man thorki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-16 23:23:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20611082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenbringslight/pseuds/ravenbringslight
Summary: Loki moves in with Thor after both of their marriages end.





	Happiness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skornheim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skornheim/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Счастье](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22432927) by [Cinnamonius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinnamonius/pseuds/Cinnamonius), [WTF_Thorki_Hiddlesworth_and_Co_2020](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WTF_Thorki_Hiddlesworth_and_Co_2020/pseuds/WTF_Thorki_Hiddlesworth_and_Co_2020)

> From an au idea from skornheim who graciously said I could write it <3
> 
> written in an hour with a head cold, but I wanted to get it out before it flitted away

When Loki pulls up the dirt drive to Thor’s house, he crosses paths with Torunn, who’s on her way out. She’s not happy to see him, but she’s not unhappy either, which is a nice change from the way his own children look at him.

“You’d better be nice to him,” Torunn says. “He deserves it.”

“Hello to you too, Torunn.”

“Tara. My friends call me Tara.”

Loki puts his hands in his trouser pockets. “Does Thor call you that?”

She smiles just a little bit. “Nah. Dad says he’s too old to learn any new-fangled American names so I’m stuck with the one he gave me.”

“I’m pretty old too, you know.”

She just laughs and walks past him to her own car.

“I mean it!” she yells back at him. “Be nice!”

The fall air has enough of a nip in it that Loki’s cold in only his shirt sleeves. He tells himself it’s that that speeds his steps to the front door, where he pauses, hand up to knock, but not knocking. He takes a deep breath. Tries to remember how Thor’s voice sounded on the phone when he’d invited him to come stay.

He doesn’t get a chance to get any further into his own head because the door is already opening on his brother’s smiling face. His hair and beard are more gray than blond, but his smile is all timeless, sunny Thor, and Loki feels some splinter of ice inside him start to melt.

“Hey,” Loki says to Thor’s face for the first time in ten years.

*

Thor’s house could more rightly be called a cottage. It’s tucked away in the woods on top of a hill. Living room, kitchen, bathroom, two bedrooms, a half finished cellar. The one really nice feature of the house is a wrap around porch with a roof. In summer the trees hide everything and you can pretend you’re lost in the wilderness, but in winter when the branches are bare you can see the town in the valley. It’s in a half-between state now, the whole forest flaming up in red and gold before it goes to sleep for the winter. It’s suited to Loki’s mood. He feels in a half-between state right now too. 

“This one’s yours,” Thor says, pushing the door of the smaller bedroom open. “Torunn picked out the bedding, so if you don’t like it you can complain at her, not me.” He sounds good-natured when he says it, like they rib each other a lot. 

It’s a twin bed. Loki hasn’t slept in a twin bed since he moved out of their parents’ house. Thinks his feet will probably stick off the end of it.

“It’s perfect.”

*

Sometimes Loki tries to remember the last time he was happy. 

He’d thought he was happy for a little while, after he skipped town at eighteen, but back then he’d just mistaken freedom for happiness. He’d thought it again when he and Victor were living it up in New York City, but it turned out that alcohol and coke and sex weren’t actually a good substitute either. With Sigyn he’d never even pretended he was happy; it was just expedient, and got them things they both wanted, until the bad outweighed everything else so much that they couldn’t even stand to be in the same building anymore and communicated only via lawyer.

Selling the condo had felt pretty great, but once again, spite could only carry a person so far.

Happiness.

Loki remembers the summer he was sixteen, Thor’s last one before college, and how they’d spent every minute of it together. It’s sun-drenched and honey-thick in his mind, and it’s hard to think about, because when he does the sweet ache of nostalgia takes his breath away and makes him maudlin for days. There have been flashes of something like happiness since then, maybe. The births of his kids. The rare times over the years that he and Thor were in the same place and no one was grieving or angry.

He and Thor are in the same place now and no one is angry.

No one is yelling. No one is hiding in icy silence.

They’re eating breakfast together, and Thor is making Loki’s coffee the way he likes it. Loki is spending the morning peering through his new reading glasses working on the novel he’s been putting off his entire life, while Thor hammers and saws away at something out in the yard. 

They’re eating lunch that Loki put together himself. Someone else has done Loki's cooking for the last several decades and it's a pitiful showing, but Thor is eating it and not even complaining about the burned bits.

They’re ordering takeout for dinner and riding together in Thor’s truck down to town to pick it up, windows down despite the chill, their hair whipping around every which way and laughter in their throats at the ridiculous sight they make.

Happiness.

Loki’s been running away from it since he was sixteen and now at fifty-eight he’s just sold off his entire life and moved in with his mostly-estranged-but-not-quite brother, and he wonders why he ever ran at all.

*

Loki wanders into the kitchen looking for coffee and ends up following his nose out onto the back porch. It snowed overnight, just a fine dusting, and he pulls his robe closed. Thor is leaning on the railing watching the birds at a feeder he’s hung from a tree. Two steaming cups of coffee sit by his elbow.

Loki joins him. The coffee warms its way down his throat and he hums.

When he sets his mug down, Thor takes his hand and folds it into his own. Strokes his knuckles.

“Thor,” Loki says quietly. He doesn’t want to startle the birds. “Why are you holding my hand?”

“Because I want to,” Thor says, keeping his eyes on the trees.

They stay like that for who knows how long. When Thor finally turns, he brings Loki’s knuckles up to his lips and presses a soft whiskery kiss to them, then gathers their empty mugs and brings them into the house.

Loki stays outside until he’s sure that he’s stopped blushing.

*

Thor sells the wooden things he makes at the flea market in town. Sometimes Loki comes with him. He’s bad for sales, but Thor is always happy to bring him along. While Thor smiles at the customers, Loki gives them sour looks and pointed words and insults them with backhanded compliments. After he’s driven away yet another potential customer, he’ll ruthlessly tear them apart under his breath until Thor is nearly convulsing from holding his laughter in. 

It feels good to make his brother laugh.

*

One of the women from town makes the trek up the hill and knocks on the door.

“What’s this?” Loki says.

She laughs a little nervously. “Pie.”

Loki takes it from her. “Thank you,” he says, already closing the door on her.

“Wait! Is Thor home?”

Thor is nearly always home. He’s in the cellar right now, getting a jar of preserves to replace the one they used up this morning.

“No.”

“Oh! Um. It’s nice to meet you…?”

She trails off expectantly, no doubt hoping for his name. It was probably the reason for her trip. Small towners. Loki mentally sighs.

“Loki.”

“And how do you know Thor?”

Loki just stares at her until she laughs nervously again. “Well, it’s so nice to see Thor coming back into town, so nice...he used to be there every Sunday, you know, but he hasn’t been in some time...and smiling so much! I haven’t seen him smile so much since Jane left. How is she, do you know? She was such a dear. Came to my knitting club on Tuesdays, made the prettiest scarves you’ve ever seen in your life. Anyway, when Thor gets back in, tell him Cindi came over to say hi. Tell him I baked that apple pie he likes.”

“Thor hates apple pie,” Loki says flatly and closes the door in her face.

Thor is just coming up from the cellar.

“Who was that?”

“Someone who thinks we’re boyfriends.”

“Oh?” Thor says, waggling his eyebrows. “Aren’t we?”

Loki thinks about how Cindi said that Thor hasn’t smiled since Jane left, and about how Thor is smiling at him right now.

He resists the urge to plant the pie directly in Thor's face.

*

Thor holds Loki’s hand a lot now. Loki doesn’t complain. He can’t remember the last time anyone held his hand just because they wanted to, or really even touched him at all except for handshakes. It’s embarrassing how soft it makes him feel.

Thor falls asleep watching TV on the couch holding Loki’s hand, and Loki lets himself rub his thumb over each one of Thor’s knuckles individually, and then the bones of his wrist—and then he gets up and covers his brother with a blanket their mother crocheted before she died and goes to his tiny bed and falls asleep staring at the ceiling.

*

One time, Loki brings up Jane.

One time, Thor brings up Sigyn (but not Victor. Victor is such ancient history that it’s not even worth the breath they’d expend).

They both agree that at least they got some pretty amazing kids out of the deal.

*

They never bring up Frigga, but that’s to be expected.

*

Thor’s had a batch of mead brewing since before Loki moved in, and when it’s finally ready to drink it’s nearly Christmas.

“It tastes like summer,” Loki says, rolling a sip of it around his mouth.

“Mmm, a little bit of sunshine to carry us through the winter,” Thor agrees.

Loki thinks of another summer and aches with the memory.

A sip turns into a glass, and then they’re many glasses in and Loki is feeling loose and bubbly and only a little achy when Thor says, “How long do you think you’ll stay here?”

It takes Loki unawares, and his stomach gives a lurch. “I didn’t know you wanted me to leave.”

“No!” Thor says quickly. “I don’t. That’s not… I’m just always afraid that one day I’ll get up and make your coffee and that you won’t be there to drink it. My life here is...slow. Boring. And you’re not either one of those things. I figured you’d get tired of it eventually.”

“I’m not tired of it,” Loki says. “This is—” he has to fight to order his words, “—this is good. This is nice. I like it here. With you.”

Thor smiles one of his heartstopping smiles. Loki has always been helpless for those smiles.

“Why did we ever fight?” Thor says.

“Because—” Loki gestures with his glass and nearly loses some over the side. “We’re _fucking idiots_.”

Thor catches his glass and sets it down, and then pulls him into a bear hug. He’s so _big_. Loki closes his eyes and lets the world spin a little and lets himself melt against his brother’s chest.

“I like it here with you, too,” Thor says.

Loki’s chest aches with an expansive fullness that he could never begin to put into words. So much of their lives they’ve wasted. He pulls back just far enough for his hands to slide up to cup around Thor’s neck.

“Hey,” Thor says, his arms still around Loki’s waist. “You’re drunk.”

“Only a little,” Loki insists. His thumbs stroke Thor’s bearded cheeks. He’s still so handsome. The years have only added to him, they haven’t taken anything away.

“Brother,” Thor says, nearly a whisper.

Loki puts his thumbs at the corners of Thor’s mouth and studies it. He exhales the thought he’s hardly ever even admitted to himself.

“I’ve been in love with you since I was sixteen.”

Thor’s arms tighten around him. His lips taste like honey. They taste like forgiveness. They taste like all of Loki’s years of running finally come to an end, and he sighs into his brother’s mouth.

Happiness.

*

Loki’s tiny bed is gone. In its place is a desk that Thor made himself, where Loki can write without having to hunch over his laptop on the couch.

In the other bedroom, there’s a new nightstand, and a new dresser, and two men who used to spend all their nights alone and now never spend one apart.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter.com/thunderingraven


End file.
